ANNOUNCEMENT: NEW VERSION: HTML::Template 2.0
HTML::Template - a Perl module to use HTML Templates
CHANGES
2.0
- New Feature: new 'search_path_on_include' option (Jody Biggs)
- New Feature: much requested variable __ODD__ added to set of
loop_context_vars.
- New Feature: new 'no_includes' option (Scott Guelich)
- Doc Addition: Added link to Japanese translation (Kawai Takanori)
- Bug Fix: loop_context_vars broken again (T.J. Mather, Martin Schroth
and Dave Wolfe)
- Bug Fix: vanguard_compatibility_mode was broken on first line of
included files. (uchum)
DESCRIPTION
This module attempts make using HTML templates simple and natural. It
extends standard HTML with a few new HTML-esque tags - ,
, , , and .
The file written with HTML and these new tags is called a template.
It is usually saved separate from your script - possibly even created
by someone else! Using this module you fill in the values for the
variables, loops and branches declared in the template. This allows
you to seperate design - the HTML - from the data, which you generate
in the Perl script.
A Japanese translation of the documentation is available at:
http://member.nifty.ne.jp/hippo2000/perltips/html/template.htm
This module is licenced under the GPL. See the LICENCE section of the
README.
AVAILABILITY
This module is available on SourceForge. Download it at:
http://download.sourceforge.net/HTML-Template/HTML-Template-2.0.tar.gz
The module is also available on CPAN. You can get it using CPAN.pm or
go to:
http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/S/SA/SAMTREGAR/
MOTIVATION
It is true that there are a number of packages out there to do HTML
templates. On the one hand you have things like HTML::Embperl which
allows you to freely mix Perl with HTML. On the other hand lie
home-grown variable substitution solutions. Hopefully the module can
find a place between the two.
One advantage of this module over a full HTML::Embperl-esque solution
is that it enforces an important divide - design and programming. By
limiting the programmer to just using simple variables and loops in
the HTML, the template remains accessible to designers and other
non-perl people. The use of HTML-esque syntax goes further to make
the format understandable to others. In the future this similarity
could be used to extend existing HTML editors/analyzers to support
this syntax.
An advantage of this module over home-grown tag-replacement schemes is
the support for loops. In my work I am often called on to produce
tables of data in html. Producing them using simplistic HTML
templates results in CGIs containing lots of HTML since the HTML
itself could not represent loops. The introduction of loop statements
in the HTML simplifies this situation considerably. The designer can
layout a single row and the programmer can fill it in as many times as
necessary - all they must agree on is the parameter names.
For all that, I think the best thing about this module is that it does
just one thing and it does it quickly and carefully. It doesn't try
to replace Perl and HTML, it just augments them to interact a little
better. And it's pretty fast.
DOCUMENTATION
The documentation is in Template.pm in the form of POD format
perldocs. Even the above text might be out of date, so be sure to
check the perldocs for the straight truth.
CONTACT INFO
This module was written by Sam Tregar (sam@tregar.com) for Vanguard
Media (http://www.vm.com). You can join the HTML::Template
mailing-list by sending a blank message to
htmltmpl-subscribe@lists.vm.com.